Suicide Prevention

As part of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 10-year strategy to reduce Veteran suicide, VA invites innovators across the country to participate in Mission Daybreak — a $20 million challenge designed to help VA develop new suicide prevention strategies for Veterans.

As part of the Department of Veterans Affairs and White House national suicide prevention efforts, April 15, VA published a Notice of Funding Opportunity for approximately $51,750,000 in suicide prevention grants.

The Biden-Harris administration submitted to Congress the president’s budget for fiscal year 2023. This budget delivers critical resources to help VA serve Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors as well as they have served our country — and it will allow VA to continue providing more care, more services, and more benefits to more Veterans than any time in its history.

The Department of Veterans Affairs encourages Veterans affected by inflammatory bowel diseases to access a new website that raises awareness of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

As part of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ and national suicide prevention efforts, VA is publishing an Interim Final Rule March 10, 2022, implementing section 201 of the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act, known as the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program.

To encourage outpatient mental health care and reduce any potential barriers associated with seeking it, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is proposing to eliminate copayment requirements for outpatient mental health visits and reduce the copayments for medications dispensed to Veterans who are identified as high risk for suicide by a VA clinician.

New data included in the Department of Veterans Affairs 2021 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report notably shows a decrease from 2018 to 2019 in the total number of Veteran suicide deaths, and a decrease in the rate of Veteran suicides per 100,000.

In conjunction with Suicide Prevention Month this September, the Department of Veterans Affairs is launching Reach Out, a new campaign that raises awareness of its mental health resources available for Veterans.

If we’re talking about Veterans’ legal challenges, by definition we’re talking about their health care, about their well-being. Because Veteran well-being is about more than health care. It’s about more than benefits. And as good as VA clinicians are—in fact, they are the best in the world, we’re seeing that every day—they can’t fix Veterans’ legal challenges. Only access to good legal assistance can do that.

We’ve got a lot of good ideas, a lot of good services, a lot of good programs, and a lot of good people. But what we need to strengthen is our collective effort, our collective engagement of ideas, services, programs, and people. Our goal is to continue and advance collaborative engagement unified by a single vision, strategy, a lot of heart.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) published a notice in the Federal Register April 1, to solicit public feedback to guide implementation of the new VA Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program (SSG Fox SPGP).

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released a mobile app, March 18, that offers step-by-step guidance for those who are trying to support someone they care about and for those who are concerned about their own emotional wellbeing.